TV Review: ‘Lucifer: Anything Pierce Can Do I Can Do Better’

“It’s Chloe’s love. Think about it; she loves you, you bleed. Now she loves me, so I can die.”

You’d like to think that people tend to learn from their mistakes. But when you’re talking about Lucifer Morningstar, the lesson learned thing is often lost in the glitz of his bigger than life, everything’s about me persona. Unfortunately for Lucifer, that attitude may have cost him more than he could have ever imagined.

Things pick up right where last week’s shocker left the audience: a pissed of Lucifer wailing on a now mortal Pierce. Turns out that Cain’s plan to use Chloe in order to remove his curse worked and while he believes that Chloe’s love was responsible for the mark’s disappearance, do we really know that as fact? Either way, it’s initially irrelevant to him as he can die now. It’s only when Ella confronts him does Pierce realize there’s nothing standing in the way of his happiness with Chloe. Of course, shutting her down like he did, he’ll need to do some serious groveling to win her back.

Lucifer has also been his own worst enemy. No one to blame but himself.

And while Pierce’s gestures are grand, they also highlight the biggest issue with these last few Lucifer episodes. The Chloe/Pierce ‘ship that has never felt organic; it’s always had the unnatural tint of a storyline that didn’t work but the writers were forced to commit to. It didn’t help things that Chloe’s besotted reactions to Pierce completely undermined the strong character the show had cultivated over the past two years. Some of the blame may be due to Laura German’s choices (or those she portrayed at the direction of the writers) in going over the top with her character’s infatuations but even from Tom Welling’s point of view, Pierce’s aloofness makes Chloe attraction to him (aside from the physical) head scratching. Unfortunately for Lucifer and the viewers, the show’s going all-in, having Pierce get on bended knee to pop the question.

Though Chloe says yes, who knows how long that will last, especially considering the details of Pierce and Mazikeen’s partnership is finally revealed. Framing Lucifer for Pierce’s murder in order to get back into Hell sounds like a scheme right up Maze’s alley but now that Pierce has found love, there’s no way he’s going to tell the demon the truth. As with all things, sooner or later the truth will come out and, now that he’s mortal, Pierce won’t stand a chance against the demonic assassin.

Pierce aside, as the episode title suggests, “Anything Pierce Can Do” was all about Lucifer doing his best to prove to Chloe that he’s the better option. It comes as no surprise though that, like many of his decisions, Lucifer refuses to acknowledge the truth; the truth behind his actions and the emotions he refuses to recognize. This frame of mind has been both entertaining and frustrating. His ‘all about me’ persona plays for great laughs, thanks in part to Tom Ellis’s endless charm. And yet there is also the frustration that comes with a character failing to grow. While fun and whimsical, Lucifer can be so much more. One of the more powerful moments occurs when he invites a forlorn Chloe to dinner. Despite her heartache, the anticipation on what Lucifer may finally admit to her is written across her face and, if it wasn’t obvious before, there’s no denying that Chloe feels as deeply for Lucifer as he does for her. Yet our titular bad boy can’t get out of his own way, framing the dinner as a one-up on Pierce.

The heartbreak this revelation causes to Chloe is tangible and Laura German is spectacular in birthing the heartache from every pore. Lucifer can’t help but realize he’s screwed up but it’s not until Linda comes to see him as a friend and not a doctor, calling out his inability to be honest with both himself and Chloe that the angel realizes the error in his ways. He blames the fundamental nature of Chloe’s creation as a miracle child and a pawn in God’s plan. “That’s an excuse,” Linda tells him, “Don’t you see? You’re doing the same thing as Him now.”

Pierce proposes? And Chloe says yes…so soon after he breaks her heart.

Galvanized by Linda’s words, Lucifer drops all pretense and rushes over to Chloe’s…only to bear witness to Pierce proposing to the woman he’d devastated days beforehand, only to have her inexplicably accept.

Crushed beyond anything he’s felt before, Lucifer can only watch his love slip through his fingers.

Post Script

Well, that happened. Again, it’s understandable having two characters that don’t vibe in any way try to make things work but Pierce’s proposal? That stank too much of a forced plot point to cause agony for Lucifer. It may have been more believable if the chemistry between Pierce and Chloe was better or their relationship was cultivated over an entire season. As it stands, it’s nothing more than a false impediment placed between Lucifer and Chloe.

Though Lucifer can at times be serious, more often than not, it embraces its whimsical nature more so than the serious points of drama it sometimes exercises. Part of that is Lucifer’s lack of self-awareness, played as a running gag that works. What doesn’t work though is trying that same lighthearted angle with Charlotte’s crisis of her fate. It’s understandable that the writers don’t want to get too heavy with the emotional drama, but Charlotte’s fear of an eternity in Hell shouldn’t be used as a gag. One can toss in a few jokes without them becoming the backbone of her story arc.

Even with the often useless murder cases, it seems that the writers are doing a better job tying said cases in thematically with the character arcs. The murder of a ballerina, a fraud TV show host, and internal politics of the dance company worked will with the Lucifer/Chloe/Pierce love triangle. It’s initially played for laughs when Lucifer mercilessly reminds Chloe of Pierce’s unexplained dismissal of her but at the climax of the murder case, Lucifer tells the murderer “To think, you could have had everything you wanted, all you needed to do was tell Amber how you felt. But you blew it.” Seconds later, Lucifer recognizes that he too has blown it with the woman he loves. A sobering realization to say the least.

Darryl Jasper

From a young age Darryl embraced everything that was geek. His first true memory of the cinemas was seeing the line wrapped around the building for “The Empire Strikes Back”. The light sabers and the Force had him hooked. Though it remains his favorite sci-fi creation, Star Wars was only the beginning. Star Trek soon followed and his obsession with the various iterations of the Enterprise took him to an actual convention. Between these mega franchises, Darryl enjoyed all the geek cartoons of his era: Transformers, GI Joe, M.A.S.K. Bravestarr, Silverhawks, Voltron, and the like. An avid reader, it wasn’t long before his sci-fi and fantasy partiality in movies transferred to his reading. Star Trek was the beginning and in a strange twist, led him back to the novelized world of Star Wars. It has been non-stop geek since. Though comic books and action figures have all been a part of his menu, movies, television, and books remain his primary focus. Oh, and he’s a pretty avid gamer to boot (PS3).

I just wanna say YES to everything you wrote in your Post Script, especially the first part with the whole forced What is it… #Pecker.. #Deirce…. #ChloCain relationship??? No chemistry and that’s would have been helpful concidering the instalove they are inexplicably experiencing. I mean, she has a kid and she barely knows Pierce, what happened to her fierce mother instincts? Who does that??? And so frustrating with Lucifer’s lack of personal growth. He is just as clueless as the day he landed on earth. For “someone who knows” the detective, he sure doesn’t “get” her! I love the concept of this show and the first 2 seasons, but I’m getting tired inexplicable character behavior for the sake of a set plot goal and i’m getting tired of the devil behaving less like Lucifer Mornings and more like Austin Powers.